


am I more than you bargained for, yet?

by lucifucker



Series: a little less sixteen candles [1]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: A Little Less Sixteen Candles 'verse, M/M, OCD, Vampires, anxiety disorders, hurt!joe, joncer and ryden are only mentioned, pete+joe friendshipping, that sounds dumb when i actually type it but it's based off the video so, trohley because its fucking important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifucker/pseuds/lucifucker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happens too quickly for literally any of them to stop it, even Pete.</p><p>A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me' AU fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	am I more than you bargained for, yet?

**Author's Note:**

> For 'Bel, sorry this took me forever, there are probably typos, I'll fix them tomorrow.  
> Reviews are love, don't hate me.

It happens too quickly for literally any of them to stop it, even Pete.

One minute, everythings fine, and they're laughing, like, really laughing, for the first time in months, with Pete's arm thrown around Patrick's shoulders, and Patrick's head in Pete's smelly-ass armpit, and there are three piles of ash that no longer resemble vamps on the ground, and everything's fucking great.  
And then there's a flash of black coat-tails, and a wide-lipped smile, and blood trickling from around the knife embedded in Joe's chest.

 

Everything seems to move in slow motion. Joe's smile slowly fades into a look of utter confusion as he falls to the ground, and Andy, who's always had the best reflexes, leaps down the hill toward where he knows Brendon's gone, and Patrick falls out of Pete's grip, immediately going for his phone and dialing 911.

And Pete, Pete lunges forward, catches Joe as he falls and screams, roars like a wounded animal as he cradles the younger boy to his chest, holds him close like there isn't a steady stream of blood splashing onto his arms.

"Joe. Joe, come on, look at me, please--" He gasps, and who fucking knew vampires could cry, but Pete's definitely crying, wet, hot tears streaming down his face as his bloodstained hand strokes through Joe's hair. "Joe, please."

 

Patrick can see Joe's lips moving, just slightly, can see the way they're trembling around the 'p' sound, and when he finally manages to grit out the word he's looking for, it's strangled, and broken, and too fucking painful to hear.

"Panda?" He coughs, and Pete leans down, resting their foreheads together, and closing his eyes as his shoulders slowly relax.

"Hey, Duck Hunt." He breathes, and Patrick drops to his knees next to them, listening to the operator tell him that an ambulance will be there in fifteen minutes, and it's fucking useless, because there's so much, too much blood, and every breath Joe takes is heaving, like it's a struggle just to make his lungs work, and fuck, this isn't fair, this isn't fucking fair, because Joe's not even twenty yet, hasn't even gotten his shit together to tell Andy he loves him, yet, and he's going to die, here, on the ground in Pete's arms and there's nothing Patrick can fucking do about it.  
"M'I dying?" Joe grits out, and coughs a little, a tiny trickle of blood making it's way down his cheek from his mouth. Pete's eyes snap open and he stares, wide-eyed and terrified, down at Joe, and his mouth is open, but nothing's coming out, and Patrick realizes that Pete doesn't know what to do, either.

And then it hits him.

"Pete." He says softly, and Pete doesn't answer, doesn't even respond, just keeps staring down at Joe like he's the only thing in the fucking universe, which is pretty fair, but Patrick tries again, with more force this time, grabbing Pete's arm where it's wrapped around Joe's shoulders. "Pete." Pete's head jerks up, and Patrick swallows, hard. "Bite him."

And if Pete's eyes were wide before, they're like saucers, now, as he shakes his head.

"No." He mumbles, his entire body going rigid as he pulls Joe, if possible, closer. "No, I can't--Patrick, I can't." Patrick shakes his head.

"Pete, it's the only way." He says, and it's desperate, sure, but it's too soon, it's too fucking soon, and if this is what it takes then this is what they're going to fucking do. "You have to. You can save him, just do it."

 

Pete looks back down at Joe, whose breathing is getting shallower by the minute, tugs him closer, and leans down to nudge Joe's nose with his own.

"You're not dying." He hisses, and Joe's eyes go just a little wider. "I'm not letting you." And slowly, Pete bares his teeth, tilting his head and resting his mouth at the crook of Joe's neck.

"This is gonna hurt a little, Joey." He whispers, and Patrick has flashes of every time Joe's broken a bone or gotten dumped, every time he's ever been in pain when Pete would crawl into the back of their shitty-ass van and curl up with him and tell him that it's okay, Joey, it's gonna be okay. "But it's gonna make you better, okay?" And Joe nods, or does his approximation of nodding considering how much his body's already trembling, and as Patrick watches Pete presses his lips against Joe's jugular, kisses it for just a split second, and then bites down, hard.

 

The sound Joe makes is, in a word, inhuman.

 

-0-

 

Everything is dark, and cold, and he hates it.

His body is shaking, shivering, and he can't make it stop, can't even make his eyes open, and fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, it hurts, it all hurts, every inch of him is ice and pain and too much too fast and he can't take it.

"I'm sorry." Someone whispers, arms slightly warmer than his sliding around his waist while a pair of soft, full lips press against his cheek. "I'm sorry." Pete.

"H-hurts, P-Panda." He manages, and Pete exhales slowly against his skin, and cards his fingers ever-so-gently through his hair.

"I know." He murmurs, nuzzling his nose against Joe's jawline. "I know, baby, I'm sorry."

Joe falls out of consciousness with the smell of Pete's bedding in his nose and Pete's breath wafting over his skin.

-0-

He blinks, and the first thing he sees is Pete's face, slack with sleep, in front of him. Immediately, he tries to sit up, and panics, because he's moving, or he's trying to, but his body just isn't cooperating, and no matter how hard he tells it to get with the program, he's stuck.

And yeah, he freaks out a little bit, because he's in a tiny, dark little space that smells like shitty cologne and sweat, and he can't move, can't even open his mouth to scream, and now he can't even fucking breathe because no, no, this is not fucking happening, he can't fucking do this, no, stop, please--  
"Joe." His eyes flick back down and Pete is looking at him, calm and collected and so very, very unlike Pete, and that right there is enough to give him pause as Pete's fingers reach up and cup the back of his neck, thumb rubbing over his pulse point. "Breathe."

And, lo and behold, he does. Deep breaths, in and out, and the pain in his chest isn't gone, but it's subsiding, slowly, with each brush of Pete's fingertips over his skin, the iron grip around his lungs gets a little less tight.

"I've got you." Pete says, and something in the back of Joe's brain clicks, and he remembers, remembers the blinding pain in his chest and the sound of Pete's screams, and lips pressed against his neck, and then nothing.

If he's dead, then this is a pretty shitty excuse for a heaven, is his last thought before he slips out again.

-0-

  
The next time Joe wakes up, the first thing he does is open his eyes, look up at Pete and say;

"Where's Andy?" Because he's cold, and he's confused, and he doesn't know where he is or what's going on, but he knows that no matter where he is, Andy should be there.

Pete bites his lip, and winces a little, and Joe's eyes widen because that absolutely cannot be good.  
"What?" And maybe his voice is a little raspy, and maybe he sounds a little more urgent than is strictly necessary, but he doesn't care.  
He just woke up and Andy's not here, and that's all that matters.

"We, um..." Pete looks down, and nods. "We should talk. About...that."

-0-

When Pete finally agrees to let Joe out of the coffin, it's past midnight, four days after Joe had been bitten. He crawls out and immediately the fear that's been building in his stomach is gone because Andy's there, standing about ten feet away looking just as fucking terrified as he is, and it's second nature to throw himself forward, wrap his arms as tightly around the older boy as they'll go, and bury his face in the crook of his neck while Andy buries his fingers in his hair.

Unfortunately, it didn't actually occur to Joe that he's so hungry he could die until his mouth is pressed against Andy's jugular, and his nose is inhaling the sweet scent of soft skin and unbearably clean blood, and it's completely normal, right? That his teeth start to feel weird and his fingers curl tightly in Andy's shirt to hold him there, because Andy smells so good and could only possibly taste better, is warm and comfortable and feels like home beneath him, and every bit of Joe is telling him to bite. 

And he wants to. Really, really wants to, except then, there's another pair of hands on his hips, pulling him back, and Andy's backing away looking even more scared than he did before, and he knows he's lashing out because Pete's voice is back, telling him to  _stop, now._

 _  
_ And in spite of the fact that he's pretty sure he has no control over what his mouth wants to do to Andy's neck, he does, as though Pete's telling his body what to do instead of him, and wow is that fucking weird. 

They stand there for a long minute while Joe comes back to himself, while the world slowly comes back into focus and stops being just a wash of red and the smell of copper, and when it does, it's fucking awful.

Becuase Andy is standing with his back against the far wall, as far from Joe and Pete as possible without leaving the room, and Patrick is standing between them holding a bottle of holy water, and everything just kind of...clicks. 

He tried to bite Andy. 

Joe's a vampire, and a shithead, and he tried to bite Andy. 

Pete stopped him, because Pete made him. If you turn a stupid fucking nineteen-year-old into a vampire, you have control over them.

Everything comes back to one key aspect of this, which is that he tried. To bite. Andy. 

 

It takes him all of about three seconds to break out of Pete's grip, and bolt out the door, and Pete doesn't stop him. 

 

-0-

He ends up at the top of that stupid hill where idiot teenagers go to makeout, curled up in a ball, staring out at the city beneath him, and he feels like fucking  _Pete_ or something, moping in the dark about his fucking vampirism, but it's kind of the only thing he can think to do, considering the fact that every bit of him is screaming that he needs blood right fucking now. There are two girls sitting in a beat-up old toyota with the windows rolled down, exactly fifty feet away (and Joe's always been admittedly good at math and measurements, but this is ridiculous) and he's calculated that considering how much faster he can move, now, it would take him approximately 5.74 seconds to run over there and sink his teeth into one of them.

But, wonder of wonders, he doesn't. Instead, he bites down on his own arm and ignores the way it stings and tries not to scream while he does it because this is about as remote of a place as he can get to without actually running away into the woods like Pete did right after he turned, and much as he'd love to go turn into a dark child of the night and live in the depths of the forest, he does actually want help, and he's pretty sure he won't find it alone with the trees. 

So he sits there and he lets his teeth elongate into the flesh of his arm and he tries not to think about the look in Andy's eyes when he'd pulled back. 

 

To his credit, Pete actually gives him enough time to cool down to a moderate degree before coming after him, and even then he doesn't actually say anything, just sits down on the grass and places a thermos between them, and waits for Joe to speak first. 

"I almost bit him." He mumbles into his forearm, and he feels the air around Pete's head shift instead of actually seeing him nod, and fuck, he's never going to be able to sleep, again, if this is how weird his senses are going to be. 

"But you didn't." Pete responds, and Joe snorts. 

"Because you stopped me." 

"You wouldn't have hurt him." He says it like it's fact, and it's definitely not. 

"That's a matter of opinion."

"It's not always like this." And that's what makes the wheels in Joe's brain stop turning, just for a minute. He turns, and looks at Pete, who's not looking at him, instead his gaze is out over the skyline, like the lights of the city are a piece of art he's never seen before instead of a regular occurence in their lives. 

"What do you mean?" Pete shrugs.

"It gets better." And that's got to be bullshit, because Joe's acutely aware that the brunette girl's pulse has picked up by a few notches in the past minute, and he knows for a fact that Patrick is close by because he can smell him on the air, and there's no possible way for this to get better.

"You mean you get used to it." Pete's mouth quirks into a slight grimace, and he flicks his eyes back down at Joe. 

"No, I mean it gets better. Easier." He pushes the thermos closer to Joe, and shakes his head. "It's good shit, man. And it works." He shrugs. "Look at me, have I taken a bite out of Patrick, recently?" And that's fair. Pete's definitely gotten a lot less...violent, and in spite of the fact that he's skeptical as hell about this bullshit, Joe takes the thermos and unscrews it, sniffing it's contents with one raised eyebrow. 

"This smells like shit."

"Yup." Pete nods, and looks back out at the sky. "Tastes like it, too." Joe makes a noise, but throws it back anyway, gulping it down and trying not to gag when the taste finally hits. Pete chuckles, and Joe hates him a little bit. 

 

He feels it almost immediately, the way the fucking disgusting fluid quenches the thirst, and he keeps drinking, takes every last drop because it might taste fucking awful, but with every swallow the burning need in his chest subsides just a little, until it's barely even there, just a tiny craving in the back of his mind like he gets when he really, really wants an eggroll. 

 

They sit in silence for a few more minutes while Joe notes with satisfaction that while he can still track the blonde girl's every movement, it's no longer with the express intent and desire to rip her throat out with his teeth. 

 

And it helps, it really does, but it far from fixes everything. 

"I could still hurt him." He says softly, and it's the absolute worst kind of realization, because throughout their entire relationship, people have told him that Andy's fragile, and that he needs to be careful, and that if anyone's going to come out broken, it's going to be Andy, and it's never been so fucking true until right now. 

"You could." Pete agrees, shifting closer, until their shoulders press together, and Joe leans into him, just a little, and they've always been like this, have always been tactile, but now it's like Pete's not-warmth next to him makes everything less scary. Fucking vampries. 

"I don't...I can't...." He's trying to get the words out, but they're just not coming, and it hurts like a bitch because this isn't right. 

"You love him." Pete murmurs, one arm wrapping slowly around Joe's shoulders, and all he can really do is nod. "I love Patrick." And that's true, they all know it, Joe's known it since he was seventeen years old and showed up on Patricks front step, towing Pete in his wake, and got to watch as Pete laid eyes on Patricks oh-so-holy argyle-clad form for the first time. "You'll learn to control it. You're learning already." 

Joe nods slowly, and swallows, thick and hard and just this side of painful. 

"I scared him." He says slowly, and Pete squeezes him gently. 

"So go tell him you're sorry." He says simply, and Joe looks at him. 

"You think I can do that without trying to eat him, again?" He asks dubiously, and Pete just nods. 

"I'll be nearby. If it looks like you're going to, I'll stop you." He shakes his head. "But I don't think I'll need to. Do you?"

 

It takes Joe a minute to process, but eventually, he looks down, and does the same. 

"No."

"Good." Pete says firmly, letting Joe go and standing up faster than should be physically possible. He smacks his legs to rid them of dirt, and reaches down, pulling Joe to his feet in one smooth motion. "Let's go fix this bullshit with your boyfriend."

-0-

When all is said and done, Joe's said he's sorry about a million differnt times and ways, and Andy's told him that it's fine even more, and Joe ends up curling up alone in the coffin Pete and Patrick got for him and trying not to scream because the space is too fucking small. And normally, Andy would be there to tell him it's okay, and not to cry, because it's just space, and he can have as much or as little of it as he wants. 

But instead Andy is, as per Joe's hollered insistence, staying away from him because _you can't, Andy, I could **kill** you, literally fucking kill you, you can't just ignore that. _

_"Don't do this."_

_"I need time. "_

_"I need **you."**_

 

So he's alone, like he fucking should be, because he's an asshole and an idiot and a fucking vampire. 

And what he wants to be doing (what he tells himself he wants to be doing, anyway) is finding Brendon and fucking murdering him, because they've gone easy on their friends, and it was a mistake. 

But the issue is that he keeps thinking that, and then he remembers Brendon smiling at him the day before he got taken, bright and unabashed and so fucking  _happy_ and he feels like even more of a shithead. 

Because much as he doesn't deserve this, Brendon definitely deserved it less. 

So he sits in the dark, and the cold, because it  _is_ cold, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and makes your fucking soul shiver, he lies there, and he stares at the ceiling of his tiny-ass coffin and wishes he could die. 

-0-

It goes on like this for weeks. 

They keep hunting, albeit more carefully, now. Joe's not allowed to get too close to the humans he's not basically forced to, so instead he's on vampire duty, doing all the same shit he did before he turned except now, he and Andy don't look at each other, and when it's all over and there's a little blood on his face and a lot more on his hands, he washes it off alone in the bathroom, with no reflection to speak of, and no warm, tattooed arms around his waist to remind him that yes, five re-rinses is enough. 

After the first time he accidentally scubs his hands with steel wool until it's his own sluggishly oozing blood coming out, Pete starts coming with him, gently nudging and coercing him around until he's clean and fed and in his coffin before sunrise. 

For the first few nights after that, Pete crawls into Joe's coffin with him, curls his body around the younger boy's and holds him close, and Joe doesn't sleep  _well_ , but at least he's sleeping, period. 

Pete's presence is calming, more than it used to be, and he's acutely aware all the fucking time of exactly where Pete is and what Pete's doing, and that helps, but it's not great

It's life, but it's not living, and Joe misses Andy's hands in his every single minute of every single day. 

-0-

The first time they see Brendon after it happens, it becomes apparent that someone else got there first. 

Because Patrick spots him walking down Chestnut around midnight on thursday, and without speaking they all immediately go into action, because the plan used to be to force Bren into drinking Pete's weird-special-smoothie-shit, but they haven't talked about it since Joe turned, and since every time anyone mentions his name, Patrick's hands curl into fists and his entire body goes stiff, Joe's got no clue how this is going to go down. 

But apparently, their understanding of the situation was completely wrong, because when they corner him, ready to tackle him to the ground in the alleyway and start spraying holy water all over his face, Brendon freezes like he's seen a ghost, and then launches himself at Joe.

And Joe's not exactly off-guard, but he's not exactly expecting it, either, so he kind of flails and gets knocked back onto the ground and thinks  _yeah, this is it, I'm fucking doomed_ until he realizes that Brendon's not stabbing him or kenesising him to the ground.

Instead he's got both arms wrapped tightly around Joe's torso, and his face is buried in the crook of his neck and he's  _crying,_ sobbing, his entire body shaking and shuddering as he gasps  _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I can't--I didn't--I'm sorry, Joe, how--_ into Joe's shirt and it's not exactly his most primal instict to let his arms fall around Brendon's back, but it's definitely the right choice because Brendon shifts up and frames Joe's face with his hands, staring at him through his tears like he's seeing the sun for the first time (and the irony of that does not escape Joe for a second) 

This all lasts for about six seconds, until there's a dull thud, and Brendon rolls off him, and when Joe looks up, Andy's standing over him, holding a crossbow by the wrong end, and looking down at Brendon, unconscious beside him, with an expression halfway between hatred and loss, and all Joe wants to do is grab him, drag him down and crush him against his chest, but he doesn't. 

Instead, he sits up, and stares down at Brendon, who's not wearing the fucking suit he wore when he ran with William, instead he's got an old, ratty pair of jeans on and a tank top that looks startlingly familliar for a second until Joe remembers that it's his, from long, long before all this bullshit, black and white striped and stained beyond belief, and he knows for sure he left it at Ryan's apartment the wekeend before Pete got bitten (Pete, who is so livid that Joe can literally feel his anger, pulsing off him in waves), so how....

"Joe?" It's soft, and lilting, and it's not a voice that belongs to any of his guys, because he knows their fucking voices by now, and he knows that one, too.

He looks up, and Ryan is standing at the end of the alley, looking awestruck and a little shaken, and Joe doesn't have time to think before he's got an armful of Ryan Ross, and sure, he's got a lot of control, now, he's been learning, but wow, human, in his face, very close, very quickly, and wow, he was not expecting that. 

Turns out it's not that big of a problem, because he doesn't even jump, doesn't have that moment of pure lust and rage that makes him want to bite down as hard as he can on the conjunction between Ryan's neck and shoulder. 

Instead he hugs back, because damn, he'd kind of forgotten that everyone thinks he's dead, and it's not until he sees two more familiar figures at the end of the alley making their way toward him that he realizes that yeah, wow, they really do, because that's Jon and Spencer, and they're coming fast, and it's not too long before he's got two other fully grown men clinging to him. 

When they're all finished crying and hugging and Brendon's finally woken up from being beaned with a fucking crossbow (nice one, Andy) they all sit kind of awkwardly, everyone still a little on-edge, while Ryan and Jon explain how after Brendon and Spencer had been taken, they'd decided that was bullshit, and gone after them (and honestly, Joe wishes they'd done that) 

And he can visualize it, too, as Jon explains slowly, and carefully, sneaking into the nest and dragging Spence out, forcing him to drink whatever weird concotion Bob had cooked up for them and holding him down until it took while Spencer fought and screamed and thrashed under him.

They talk for a long-ass time, and somewhere in the middle Joe feels fingers on the back of his neck, and a body pressed up behind him, and realizes that Pete is pulling him back against his chest, and he goes, fully willingly, because his foot has been tapping an anxious pattern against the ground, and as soon as Pete touches him, it stops. ( _Fuck,_ he is never going to get used to this whole maker/made dynamic)

It's not...awkward, exactly, more resigned than awkward, as they part.

Because this is a war, and they've all done things they regret, and as Joe tugs Brendon close, again, and curls his fingers into the back of a shirt that was once his, he keeps that in mind. 

"I'm sorry." Brendon says again, and Joe nods. 

"I know." They both look down at the shirt, and Brendon swallows thickly. 

"You...can have it back, if you want, I...kept wearing it, cause.." Joe shakes his head, and tries to damp down the thing that must be a fucking stone that's rising into his throat considering how hard it is to breathe. 

"Keep it." He says, even though it's a struggle to get the words out. "I want....you to have it." 

And wow, you really don't notice how badly you missed something until you get it back, because Brendons smile is blinding. 

He watches Ryan pull Brendon down into a soft kiss and lead him away with his stomach twisting into knots of anxiety, but his heart warm with the thought that maybe they'd resemble okay.

 

When they get home, Joe makes straight for his coffin, doesn't say anything to anyone or acknowledge Patrick when he asks if he's okay, just crawls into bed and closes himself in and tries not to fucking cry because he never, ever expected this, wasn't prepared for this.

About an hour after sunrise, if his watch still works, Joe has curled up on his side and is facing the side, inspecting every indentation of the wood when the top of his coffin lifts. 

 

He jerks his head up, and someone is standing over him, and they keep it almost black in the room with the coffins by necessity, but he knows that hair, see even better in the dark now, because fucking vampirism, and as the scent of the drummer's skin wafts over him, he presses himself back, into the wall of the coffin, trying to shrink as far away as he can as Andy slides down and pulls the lid shut behind him. 

It's close, it's too close, because they'd gotten him a big coffin, the kind meant for fat dudes and people who, for some weird reason, want to be buried together, but it could never be big enough, and as Joe tries to sink back into the wood away from the oh-so-welcoming warmth that radiates off of Andy's every pore, he realizes just how futile it is. 

"What are you doing?" He croaks, when he finally remembers how to use his voice, and Andy just stares at him, which Joe can see, because fucking vampire eyes and bullshit like that makes it incredibly easy to not every twitch of Andy's eyebrows even in the pitch black of the coffin. Andy stays still for a long time, longer than Joe feels completely comfortable staying still for, and then reaches out, ignoring the way Joe flinches away, and cards his fingers gently through his hair. 

"Don't." Joe breathes, hoping, praying, that Andy listens because he's not strong enough to say no, and he knows where this is going. "Don't, Andy, please, don't." But Andy doesn't listen, just shifts slightly closer, so that he can snake his other hand out to rest on Joe's chest. 

And he's warm, so warm, and Joe's so cold, and every part of his psyche is screaming at him to  _move, now, hold him like you know he needs you to, like **you** need you to, _ but he doesn't let himself do anything more than relax just slightly into Andy's touch, and that's completely involuntary. 

Clearly the angels stop listening when you get turned into a creature of the night, because all of Joe's prayers that Andy will stay back go unheard as the smaller man moves forward, closer, and closer, until their chests are touching, and his hand moves up to cup the back of Joe's head, and he's pulling Joe in and he's not going to stop him, couldn't even if he wanted to because this is Andy, and kissing him is more natural than breathing. 

So it's a little bit of a shock to Joe's system when instead of lips against his, his head keeps going down, and when he opens his eyes from where they'd instinctively fluttered shut, Andy's neck is getting closer and closer, and he stiffens, tries to pul back but Andy's got two hands in his hair, gentle, and guiding, and firm, and Joe can't get away.

And he's vaguely aware in some small part of his brain that he's begging Andy to stop, has his thumbs pressed against Andy's bare waist and oh, hello, when did that happen, and is whispering over, and over, and over "Andy, please, please, baby, don't, don't let me hurt you, please." But Andy isn't listening and before he can do anything to stop it, Joe's lips are on his neck, ghosting over soft skin, and he keeps waiting for the urge to come, for every inch of him to ache for the bite, again, like it did before, and he knows it can only be a matter of time, so he does the only thing he can think to do, tilts his head and presses a soft kiss to Andy's jugular, fighting back very, very real tears. "Please." He breathes, and Andy's fingers just stroke the hinge of his jaw. 

"I trust you." It's the first thing Andy's said directly to him since the night they'd fought, and Joe doesn't even know what to say, just lets his hands slide over the smooth skin of Andy's back, and pulls him closer, pressing another kiss to the spot just under where he was before.

And it's not conscious, because consciously he's just praying he doesn't kill Andy right then and there, but before he knows it he's littering kisses over Andy's throat, soft and hard, sucking lightly on his skin and leaving purple splotches that only he'll see in the morning, and somehow, by some miracle, when he feels the capilaries burst and sinks his teeth down, they're evenly, blessedly blunt. 

He pulls back gasping for air, and their eyes meet, and like a popped balloon, all the fight leaves him as he sinks forward and catches Andy's lips with his own. 

"I love you." It's the first time he's said it, and he wishes he'd done it before, wishes a lot of things, but settles for curling his fingers tightly in Andy's hair and saying it again, growling it against his mouth like a vow. "I love you so fucking much." 

Andy presses, if possible, closer, tangles their legs together and licks into Joe's mouth smoothly and without hesitation, murmurs the same into his cheek as Joe bites his way down to Andy's collarbone, running his tongue over miles of tattoos that didn't taste different before, but do, now, just in case he needed to add to the extent to which he fucking loves Andy's tattoos. 

He comes to rest, eventually, with his forehead pressed against Andy's shoulder, and his arms wrapped tightly around his waist. 

"I fucked up." He mumbles, and Andy nods, slowly, his fingers stroking through Joe's hair, and fuck, he misssed that so much. 

"I know." He replies, and tugs Joe up to look at him, blue eyes meeting green and fuck, Joe is so fucking...fucked. 

"You're still here." Joe says softly, and Andy smiles, just a little, tiny bit, but it's enough to make Joe's stomach do backflips. 

"Yeah." He leans forward, and nudges Joe's nose with his own. "Yeah, I'm still here."

-0-

It's a far cry from okay.

That's for sure.

But it's slightly closer to it when Joe wakes up with Andy curled around him from behind, pressing hard into his lower back, and it gets even nearer when they fuck like that, slow and sloppy and tired the next night. 

They stumble out after more hours than is probably healthy, well, for living people, but Joe's teeth had started to poke his lips just a little, just enough that he got spooked and insisted they get out in search of freaky vampire-smoothie, and Pete and Patrick are making it, together, with Pete wrapped around Patrick from behind, peppering his neck with little nips and kisses while Patrick curses him out for distracting him while he's slicing garlic for  _Pete's fucking vampire shit, so stop fucking distracting me you evil parasite._

 _  
_ So, they're not, like, okay, but Andy slides his fingers in to link with Joe's as they step up into the kitchen, and it feels kind of similar. 

Close enough, anyway. 


End file.
